A Darkening
by Choco
Summary: Hyrule Castle has many traps waiting for the unwary. An attempt at horror.


****

Disclaimer: Sorry, I don't own Zelda. I know you're all _so_ disappointed.

I've wanted to write this story for a while...but I wondered how it might turn out. Now that I've written it, I'm _still_ wondering. That's why _you_ (yes, you) should let me know what you think with a review.

Enjoy!

---

High in a window in Hyrule Castle's tallest tower, the last light dimmed, guttered, and finally failed. Low in her hiding place, between two sisters, Nabooru had to draw her lower lip into her mouth to hide her glee. Long they had waited here, hunger and exposure their only companions...but finally, their patience had won out.

She crouched still as her two companions stood and stretched their bunched muscles, staring up at them in contempt as their voices rose on the breezy night air. Hyrule Castle sat in darkness, that was true enough, but that was no excuse to grow careless, as any competent Gerudo thief would know. Not for the first time, Nabooru wondered why she'd been saddled with these two incompetent girls.

As ever, the answer came to her almost immediately. Faril, the one to the left unconsciously posing in her stained traveling silks, was a slut, and had been known to visit the Castle Town's head guardsman of a night. Amara, emerging from behind the boulder that had served as their hideout during the long wait, was a Hylian's get, and had inherited his soft blue eyes and fair skin. Otherwise useless in the Gerudo's society, where a woman's primary lover was the scimitar and outsiders were regarded with hostile suspicion, they served as adequate tools to help less respectable Gerudo move in and out of Hyrule's capital with ease. _Pawns_, the older woman thought disgustedly.

Faril helped Nabooru to her feet. "What are we looking for?" the girl asked in cloying tones, brushing strands of soft red hair off her forehead.

__

Again? "The Ocarina," she snapped as night made its presence known all around them. "How many times must I tell you? It's a pretty shade of blue, I wager you'll like that. Just stay with me once we're in the castle, you'll be able to hold it soon."

__

The Ocarina. Just saying the words made Nabooru shiver. She had forgotten how many times she'd seen the princess or that boy she'd liked so well holding it, or playing it...had forgotten how many times Rauru reminded her of how important it was that it remained in royal hands. Well, that time was done. The old man was gone, the realm was at peace, and the Ocarina had served its purpose...and would fetch a heavy purse in the bazaars beyond the Haunted Wasteland.

The money was all Nabooru cared about. Without a king at court sending home his love and rupees, famine was settling around the Gerudo like a darkness. Food was hard to come by, and the water they found was too often stale or polluted. The bloody flux was creeping through the Fortress when Nabooru and her two proteges left it, and she didn't want to think about what sort of salt meat they'd been given to chew on for their trip east. True, Nabooru had liked the soft-spoken princess well enough the few times she'd seen her, and she wondered who might buy the Ocarina and what would become of it...but when she weighed her wonders against the cold weight of rupees in her palm, the choice was easy to make.

As she, too, moved out from behind the boulder, she was surprised to see Amara pressed against it, her hands over her face. When the girl dropped them, it was obvious she had been crying. "I don't want to go in there," the girl said in a tremulous voice. "There's _ghosts_ in there."

Faril laughed scornfully at her, and it was an effort for Nabooru not to do the same. The backbone of Gerudo culture was oral tradition -- and Hyrule Castle featured as the site of some of its scariest stories. The First King had made a pact with demon gods, it was whispered, and had built his castle on the bones of his fallen enemies. The souls of those enemies had seeped into the walls, under the king's evil thrall. It was said that the souls, seeking escape, crept into the minds of the weak-willed, giving them strange appetites.

Nabooru remembered a story told to her long ago, about one Hylian king's four beautiful daughters. A foreign prince had come to court to woo and win one of them, and naturally wed the most beautiful. The prince locked his wife's sisters in a tower cell, that they might not tempt him into adultery, and told the princess that he had sent them to taste his native lands. The ruse worked for a while, though the prince was so afraid of breaking his vows that he did not allow anyone to bring them food, and by the time his deception unraveled it was too late. Their sister the princess found them, with their mouths bloody and their fingers gnawed off.

__

Tales told at the teat, Nabooru chided herself, _and naught to be frightened of._ Then why was she so cold? Tearing her eyes away from Hyrule Castle's highest tower, she glared at Amara. "Was it your wet nurse who told you that?" she asked coldly. "Come. The night wanes."

They moved then, their feet gliding soundlessly over the dirt road as they slipped under the postern gate like shadows.

The back of Hyrule Castle presented itself to them, menacing as it crawled with shadows. Nabooru cursed the cold fear that trickled down her spine. Against her will, she was reminded of another one of Hyrule's many mad rulers -- Butcher Queen Glinda. Glinda's castle was besieged by a rebellious lord's massive host shortly after she emerged from childbed; her son was weaned and the garrison was down to shoe leather and rats when she gave her cause up for lost. Her men began dying one by one in the dark, felled by a cleaver -- the only weapon Glinda knew how to wield. She said that she spared her men the worse fate of having to eat their dead; she'd shown them no real mercy though, just a mother's madness. For murder the gods cursed her, and now it was said she roamed the castle halls with her cleaver still, anxious for a taste of human flesh.

__

Enough of this. She was only frightening herself, which wasn't conducive to a successful night of thievery. Nabooru made herself approach the kitchen door first; she knocked once, twice, three times. It was opened by a friendly cook holding a taper in one of his meaty hands, and not Butcher Queen Glinda as she'd secretly feared. "Hurry, hurry," the cook muttered as the thieves slipped into his kitchen and Nabooru slipped a rupee into one of his free hands.

The exchange of the taper from the cook's hands to Nabooru's was quick. For a moment the woman was grateful for the warmth and light the candle provided...at least, until she noticed how the light made the shadows seem longer, darker. _Glinda could be hiding in that corner there...or was it a glimpse of the Mad King I got, who took a corpse to wife and held his own monstrous children before they tore his throat out?_ Her fancies were taking over her mind, fear diluting her blood as her heart raced. She had never been in Hyrule Castle in the dark; nor had she wanted to be. But the money was all that mattered. Resolve hardening within her, Nabooru squared her shoulders, angry that she let a wet nurse's tales get to her.

The cook had melted away by the time Nabooru turned to address the two girls, her face so dramatically shadowed by the uncertain light of the candle. "The way is straightforward from here," she said, her voice a hair above a whisper. "The kitchen leads into a long corridor, so your legs may get tired. Do as I say, but more importantly, do as I do. Do not turn or enter any doors until I tell you to. Do not cry out, or you'll have cause to regret it."

Amara was hugging herself. "You make it sound like some monster story, Sister."

"It's not that at all," Nabooru snapped, curt...only of course it was. That was the tale that had frightened her the most when she had been but a child. The First King's evil powers had left him in twilight of his years, driven out by his good son. But the castle took it for a slight, and turned itself against him. One night, the First King was coming back to his chambers after a late council meeting by a way unfamiliar to him -- a corridor lined with doors. Though he never touched it, one of the doors opened, and his long-dead wife beckoned to him from a field full of flowers. He went to her, but never found her...and he was lost himself, and never found. "Hyrule Castle has traps waiting for the unwary."

Faril had a smile on her face that Nabooru didn't like. _She thinks to mock me. We'll see how amusing my warnings are to her when she's surrounded by castle guards with steel in their fists._ Without a word, she turned on the two girls and left the kitchen, emerging in a large antechamber. Before her was the door that led to the corridor of doors, the door that the First King might have taken to his doom many and more years ago...amused by her fancy, she opened it.

The hallway blazed with light, torches burning in sconces high above Nabooru's head, doors of every conceivable description on both sides. There was only one door she knew she could open without happening upon a guard: on it was the carved likeness of the Golden Power, surely the same now as it had been the last thousand times she'd entered it. _That door leads to the Ocarina_. Excitement filled her, and she proceeded forward.

She heard the girls behind her -- they were giggling -- and her heart froze for a moment when she heard one of the doors swing open and shut. Too slow, too late, Nabooru whirled around and saw the corridor empty behind her. _You poxy slattern, you've doomed us all, _she thought darkly, remembering Faril's mocking smile,_ you'll be lost like the First King, and never found -- or hung as a thief, once the princess finds you._ But the Gerudo were a ruthless people, and Nabooru was in her fury, so she turned around, and left the pawns to their fate, and never looked back.

Nabooru walked, and looked carefully both right and left, but not yet had she seen the door with the likeness of the Golden Power on its front. Most of the door were closed, but that was not all to the good: one of them shuddered so violently that Nabooru knew something huge and horrible lay behind it, and behind another she heard muffled screams so painful that she quickly hurried past. Other doors were open, revealing torches that burned at the end of long corridors, and shadowy antechambers -- and once she thought she saw the Princess Zelda, though when she called out to her she received no reply. Behind one door was a woman who told her she was going the wrong way and Nabooru ran from her, hot wax splashing on her fingers.

After that she wondered if she were going the right way, but when she turned around the way behind was cloaked in darkness and something was lurking there, snuffling and dragging itself along, and she didn't wonder anymore. She walked, looking carefully right then left, trying to recall the way the princess took when she had led the sages to her apartments. A turn here, an open door there...how ridiculous that she was second-guessing herself, that when she heard the thing behind her snort she felt a start of fear. She was a Gerudo, and would not be afraid.

She was almost there; she could feel it. Yet annoyance pricked at her all the same, as she looked first right then left. She'd been walking all night, it felt like, and the door was still lost to her. Her legs began to tremble from exhaustion but she walked still, even when her candle began to gutter. She would find the door soon, and when she held the Ocarina for the first time she'd try one note -- just one -- and the instrument would be full of light and music. She need only go a little bit farther.


End file.
